Duopoly, court politics and the Danish core executive
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| Author | R. A. W. Rhodes,Heidi H. Salomonsen |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12685 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Duopoly, court politics and the Danish core
executive
R. A. W. Rhodes
1
| Heidi H. Salomonsen
2
1
Department of Politics and International
Relations, University of Southampton,
Southampton, UK
2
Department of Management, Aarhus
University, Aarhus, Denmark
Correspondence
Heidi H. Salomonsen, Department of
Management, Aarhus University, Fuglesangs
Allé 4, 8210 Aarhus V, Denmark.
Email: hhs@mgmt.au.dk
Funding information
Australian Research Council, Grant/Award
Number: DP160100896
Abstract
This article applies the ideas of the core executive and court
politics to Danish coalition and minority governments. It
asks two questions. Do these ideas travel beyond their
Westminster origins? What are the dilemmas confronting
the Danish executive and its court politics? The analysis is
based on documentary sources and 22 elite interviews with
cabinet ministers and permanent secretaries. It identifies a
duopoly of Prime Minister and Minister of Finance as a dis-
tinctive variety of court politics. It identifies the key
dilemmas confronted by the Danish executive; namely trust,
political support and politicization. It concludes that court
politics provides unique insights into the workings of Dan-
ish government. The article is a contribution to the compar-
ative analysis of the court politics of governing elites. It
shows that the focus on court politics is not only useful for
majoritarian Westminster systems but also for the analysis
of consensual parliamentary democracies.
1|INTRODUCTION
Court politics is a novel way of exploring the workings of, and challenges confronting, governments in the Westmin-
ster tradition (see for example Savoie 2008; 't Hart 2014; Rhodes 2017). However, the value of applying the idea of
court politics outside Westminster contexts remains underexplored. This article addresses this gap by analysing the
court politics of Danish minority coalition governments, focusing on the dilemma posed by the tension between cen-
tral coordination and ministerial discretion. The article asks two questions. Does the idea of court politics travel
beyond its Westminster origins to a parliamentary system of mainly minority and coalition governments? What are
the potential dilemmas confronting the executive and its court politics in a minority coalition governmental context?
The empirical foundations of the article are Danish governments which, since 1982, have been coalitions, and
apart from one, have had minority status (Christiansen and Pedersen 2014). As Damgaard (2000, p.231) notes,
Received: 21 June 2019 Revised: 9 December 2019 Accepted: 21 May 2020
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12685
72 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Public Admin. 2021;99:72–86.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm
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